Angola 2010: Welcome To The Nation Of Upsets.

January 13th, 2010 | by: chris |

74′ Angola 4 – Mali 0
FT Angola 4 – Mali 4
Malawi 3 – Algeria 0
Ivory Coast 0 – Burkina Faso 0
Cameroon 0 – Gabon 1

(And if we were to get really technical, Egypt scoring their first two goals entirely against the run of play had to be considered an upset within the frame of the game as well.)

A couple of days ago we were forced to hand Angola 2010 a new motto:

Expect the unexpected.

Despite handing out the warning ourselves, it’s still impossible to look at the daily scoreboard without a jaw slightly slacked. Burkina Faso holding the mighty Ivory Coast? A four goal supercomeback in twenty minutes? Algeria giving three to the forgotten Malawi? And the latest today, Gabon downing quasi-powerhouse Cameroon one to nil. Perhaps less impressive the win and more impressive keeping Samuel Eto’o off the charts.

Of course that was always in the cards, as time and time again people have been warned yet still do not listen: you do no tempt the football gods. They are cruel, vengeful and supremely moody bunch.

Samuel’s pre-tournament quote which had the gods flinging chairs about the room and vowing a frosty plate of revenge:

“I would like to take Cameroon as far as possible, to even win the tournament. But my first objective will be to score the highest number of goals at a single Nations Cup,”he told Reuters.

There are two problems with this:

i. Way to put the team first. Sure, the more goals he scores the better chance Cameroon has, but still…you kind of understand why Pep couldn’t wait to run Sammy out of Barcelona.

ii. You don’t say stuff like this pre-tournament. The gods do not look kindly upon such bold proclamations of record-shattering. Records were meant to be broken, but quietly. Couple that with putting the “I” before “team” and Cameroon is due an inferno of footballing hell the likes they’ve never seen.

Let this be a lesson to Mr. Eto’o on not tempting the gods.

But it’s not entirely his fault: a hearty round of applause to Gabon for keeping with the theme of the tournament. A tournament which has, four days in, exceeded our wildest expectations. And while the events that preceded it were tragic, we can only hope South Africa 2010 the tournament is exactly like Angola 2010…with just a few more cabooses in the stands.